Silence affects plausibility to the degree that you expect the sources not to be silent. In this way, the complete and unmitigated silence of the early and mid-patristic witness on Mary’s assumption in the context of lists of those believed to be bodily assumed to heaven undermines the plausibility of the idea of a commonly known oral tradition about Mary’s assumption. If such a belief was apostolic and known in the early church, it is scandalous that it would never be referenced by Tertullian, Irenaeus, Methodius, Origen, the Apostolic Constitutions, John Chrysostom, Cyril of Jerusalem,
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